Damnation's Door: A Cursed Book (16 page)

Truthfully, I couldn’t remember being this scared of Mateo before. Yes, he’d been heartless when he turned me into a punching bag in his father’s basement. Yes, he’d been a barbarian when I’d crossed paths with him a month ago and he tried to walk away with my head.

But he’d still loved me when he’d been “forced” to torture me. Adrenaline had been fuelling both of us when we fought last time.

Now I was defenseless against him. Now he loathed me. Now I couldn’t fight back, and he had nothing but time on his hands.

“I worked hard for this,” Mateo went on, slowly lowering the blade toward my face. “I sent the Blood Thorns to find you. I bribed border guards and cops. I hired the best bounty hunter on the continent. I sided with demons. Now I have you, and you know what the twist is?”

The flat of the knife pressed under my face, just below my eye. I tensed all my muscles, praying that I wouldn’t shake and he wouldn’t be able to see the fear on my face.

“I don’t get to kill you.”

Mateo drew the knife back, leaving just a shallow, stinging cut under my eye. I would have slumped with relief, if Drake hadn’t been holding my arms.

“But he promised to make you suffer,” Mateo continued, reaching into the pocket of his cargo pants. “He said it would take time, and it wouldn’t happen the way I wanted it to, but he promised that you’d endure more pain than you could ever imagine.”

He held something up between his thumb and middle finger. At first I thought it was a piece of obsidian. It didn’t seem that impressive, just a jagged black piece of rock no longer than my pinky finger.

But then I looked closer, and saw that it was nothing that could have been made on earth.

The gleaming black stone had chipped edges, like it had been sawn off a larger rock. Both tips were pointed, sharp enough to stab. Thin red lines creased the shard like broken veins.

Those broken veins were glowing red, as if the obsidian contained a fire so hot it was breaking its casing.

Somehow I knew that’s exactly what was happening. Just as I was pretty sure of where the fire had come from.

“Get that fucking thing away from me,” I hissed at my ex-lover, praying he wouldn’t hear the tremble in my voice.

“What’s wrong,
chica
?” Drake taunted over my head. “You don’t like Operation?”

I started twisting and wrenching, my flight or fight instincts kicking in even though my brain knew it was pointless. These two men had me perfectly pinned, and there was no one nearby to help me. If anyone saw what was happening, they would either run for cover, or stand back and watch.

Mateo flipped up the bottom of my shirt with the knife until my stomach was exposed. I started thrashing around worse than ever. I pulled my arms in, hoping the sweat coating my palms would be enough to let me slip out of Drake’s grasp. But his hands were iron vices, and he crushed my wrists until I thought he would break the bones inside them.

I hissed when knife sliced a line under my ribcage. This time the cut wasn’t shallow. It burned along my upper abdomen, blood sliding around as my body trembled. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t terrified. If that was a fragment, whatever it was going to do to me was going to be awful. It was going to hurt.

I wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t kill me.

“You brought this on yourself,” Mateo said in a voice dead of emotion.

He pushed the fragment into the open wound.

It was a tiny rock. Small enough that it shouldn’t have mattered. A fragment.

Yet it hurt me worse than I could have imagined.

It was like being burned by Lucifer’s fire again, but this time I wasn’t burning on the outside.

No, all this pain was coming from inside me.

The fragment exploded like a bomb under my ribs, tearing through my body like lightning. Blood turned to lava in my veins and torched my bones. My lungs shriveled inward, crushing to protect themselves rather than let me breathe. My throat was cracked and parched, saliva drying in my mouth. The fire ripped up my spine, so hot I thought it would splinter. My nerves were alight with agony, an enormous pain thrashing through my skull and trying to punch out of my eyes.

I knew I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. I thought I would erupt into flames.

The incendiary heat continued to swell and burn, expanding through my body like one giant balloon. Screams choked any attempt at begging for mercy. I couldn’t stop crying.

Then the flames curled around my bones like live wires, taking control of me. My skin was hot and wet, as if it was beginning to melt. I tasted smoke in my mouth. Every time I thought I couldn’t take any more pain, the fragment burst again and filled me with devastating agony.

I prayed that someone would kill me. Mateo could stab me in the heart or Drake could smash open my head on the concrete, and I would welcome it. Anything would be better than this unbearable torture.

A third wave of anguish rolled through me like a burning tide. My body convulsed violently as the pain redoubled, threatening to turn my entire body into a cinder.

Then the inferno scorched its way through my skull and branded my brain. It was like a burning sword had sliced into my skull. I went blind from the pain, and that was when I started to feel…

… better.

All the pain began to ebb way, each beat of my heart absorbing the torture. Embracing it, accepting it as part of me.

Soon it was gone, and I could breathe again.

I sighed, swallowing deep to drag the smoke back into my lungs. It took my body a long time to relax, but eventually it did. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

I was aware of two men standing over me, but at the moment, I didn’t remember who they were. I didn’t care either. They could do whatever they wanted to me, and I’d let them.

Depending on what they had in mind, I might even enjoy it.

“We’ll see you again,
chica
,” one of them said. “Try not to have too much fun until then.”

Sleep was coming heavily over my mind. I still managed a small smile and a slurred response.

“No promises.”

Chapter 13

When I woke up, I felt better than I’d ever felt in my whole life.

Sure, I was a little beat up and there was something poking into my ribs, but I focused on the positives.

I was alive, I was awake, and I was ready to do something fun.

I sucked in a breath and sat up. I stretched my legs and stretched my arms behind my back, pulling them together over my head. It hurt a little bit, but pain was okay. I didn’t like the itching burn under my ribs though. I dropped my arms to see what was happening there.

There was some blood on the outside of my shirt, but I ignored it and raised my shirt to see where it was coming from.

An angry red line had been zippered just under my ribcage. The skin around it was a disgusting shade of black, and it looked like something was stuck in the cut. I prodded the skin around it with my finger. The injury flashed with heat and pain, and I yanked my hand back.

Okay. Not touching that again.

I dropped my shirt and pushed myself to my feet. More bruises made themselves known as I moved, but I ignored the pain and started dusting down my jeans.

That was when I noticed someone watching me. I looked to my right and saw three people standing in the intersection at the front of the market. Two middle-aged men and a woman. They didn’t seem to have any expression that I could register. They were just staring at me.

“You got a problem?” I called to them.

They didn’t move. I don’t think they even blinked.

“Whatever,” I muttered, turning and walking away.

If they wanted to be zombies, they could be zombies. I had better things to do with my time. I had to go… somewhere. Meet up with my sister. I think. Maybe. I didn’t really care.

As I walked through the center of the market, I saw the weapons I had dropped during my fight with Drake and Mateo. Drake. Still hated that beef-headed prick. Mateo was a thorn in my side too, no pun intended, but it had been a rush to see him again. No matter how badly I wanted to kill him, I couldn’t deny that he still looked as sexy as the first moment I saw him.

Wait, didn’t I have a new boyfriend? Why was I thinking about my ex?

I mentally shrugged again. Another thing in my life that didn’t matter.

I stopped to pick the weapons up. As I started to lift my head, I noticed five more people approaching from the opposite side of the market. They had the same blank stares as the morons behind me. I tucked my blades away until I was holding only my hatchet and one throwing knife. More figures started revealing themselves from the alleys, some of them even crawling down from apartment windows.

They edged closer, moving with caution but curiosity, the same way they would move if they saw a wounded animal and were debating on putting it out of its misery.

I spun the hatchet lazily in my hand. They continued to close in around me.

“Looks like the market’s closed today, folks,” I told them. “I don’t know why for sure, but let’s just assume that all the vendors are dead.”

Nobody in the zombie crowd flinched when I said that. I’m not sure if a collective shiver would have been more disturbing than the lifeless eyes boring into my skull at every conceivable angle. And I wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

“Okay, my creepiness scale has officially gone off the charts. You all take care now.”

I turned and started walking for the spot where the crowd was still semi-spaced out. I shouldered between two construction workers and actually broke away from the circle, until one of them grabbed my wrist.

I jerked to a stop and glared at his hand. Rage burned in my heart. Who the fuck did this asshole think he was, touching me as if he could own me? I didn’t belong to him. I didn’t belong to anyone.

“If you want to keep that hand, you better take it off me,” I warned him.

His hand remained in place.

“You have it,” he whispered.

I looked up. He stared at me with the same dead eyes, though they had begun to widen.

“Last chance,” I told him.

“You were chosen. You have it.”

You can’t say I didn’t warn him.

I raised my arm and hacked the hatchet down onto his wrist. It was a strong, powerful strike that split apart his skin all the way to the bone. His half-severed hand fell from mine while his scream rang in my ears.

I grinned.

The crowd exploded into chaos.

I turned and bolted, moving onto the sidewalk and running behind the carts. The heavier, clumsier people stumbled and tripped over each other. Sometimes they even dragged the faster runners down with them. Unlucky tumblers were trampled by the rest of the horde.

I laughed.

All two dozen of us ended up in the middle of the main street. I spun on my heel and waited for the first person to reach me. She was a speedy, scrawny little girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Maybe she played soccer or ran track in high school.

She damn sure wasn’t involved in martial arts. She practically walked into my kick.

Her body crumpled in half and flew back into the crowd. The effect reminded me of bowling pins. I smiled again.
I’ll count that as a strike.

The crowd turned against the girl, furious that she’d been pushed into them. They started hitting her and pulling her hair. She screamed defiantly and fought back, but she was just skin and bones. No fighting experience would save her from the three men and two women who swarmed her. It wasn’t long before her screams of anger turned into screams of fear. It wasn’t long before she stopped screaming all together.

One down, twenty-three to go.

The girl wasn’t the only one who suffered from accidently bumping into someone. She was just the powder to the keg. Anyone who was shoved would push back twice as hard, and it took seconds for the rest of the crowd to erupt into violence.

Fists flew, bones cracked, and blood sprayed. I could feel my heart pumping with adrenaline, watching the chaos and loving every second of it. I hoped the crowd hadn’t forgotten about me.

A man in a suit twisted his head in my direction and left himself open to a strike in the side of the head. Rather than go back at his attacker, he locked eyes with me. I was smaller than him, so he probably thought he had a better chance. I smiled and tucked my knife and hatchet into my belt, then beckoned him. He didn’t need a lot of encouragement.

He flew out of the crowd and darted for me, pulling his right fist back way too early. I stood there and smiled until the last possible moment, then twisted around his left side. I curled my arm around his throat while he skidded to a stop, then used his momentum to drag him onto the ground. His head cracked loudly against the pavement, but he was still alive.

For now, at least.

I would have kept going at him, but someone was coming up behind me. I spun around and rocketed my fist into the chin of the woman thinking she had me. Her head snapped back, making it easy to punch her in the throat and kick her away.

The crowd started to realize that I was the real danger here, and began splitting off from their pathetic scuffles to try their luck against a true predator.

The next two that came at me held knives in their bloody hands. I drew my own knife and waited. The smile was still plastered on my face.

The first man who reached me was wearing a grubby shirt and sweats. He must have been homeless once upon a time. His knife looked more like a shank. He stabbed the weapon toward my face. I leaned away, grabbing his wrist and slashing it. He yelped and dropped the weapon.

I turned to his front and kicked his knee, making him stumble forward. He grunted and swung an awkward punch that I smoothly ducked. I ripped the shank from his hand and drove it into his stomach. As he crumpled in pain and shock, I used my knife to stab him in the back of the neck.

He jerked once, then stopped moving all together. I pulled the knife and shank free and flipped both into a reversed grip. The second man was a teenager wearing a flat baseball hat and clothes two sizes too big for him. Maybe he thought dressing like a gangster would make him one. Maybe he thought killing me would prove his toughness.

In the end, it didn’t matter. He was still pulling back his knife when I bent my knees and shouldered close. I stabbed both knives into his chest and pulled them down to his ribs. His blood sprayed onto my face as he fell back screaming.

I took a step back and was ready for the next fight when a heavy body slammed into me. I tried to roll away, but my attacker refused to release me. His weight finally turned into his advantage when he pinned me underneath him.

He locked eyes with me, and I noticed that he wasn’t that unattractive. Dark hair, dark eyes, nice lips, nice skin. Sure, he wasn’t a closet male model like Mateo, and he wasn’t even close to the realm of sexiness that Warrick conquered...

But I still wanted him.

And he wanted me.

With my arms pinned at my side, I couldn’t stop him from snapping his head down and kissing me. He forced his tongue into my mouth, pushing it around like he was looking for hidden treasure. I let him play around my mouth for a couple seconds before I decided to get rough. I caught his bottom lip in my teeth and bit down hard.

He yelped and pulled back, and I just bit down harder. Soon I could taste his blood.

The man finally tore away from me. Blood dribbled down his chin as he scowled menacingly at me. Somehow I was
still
smiling, even when he pulled back his fist to hit me.

The strike never connected, because the man’s arm was grabbed. He whipped his head around, and had his face punched so hard I swore I heard every bone in it crack. The man toppled off me, completely unconscious. Another man knelt down beside me, reaching down to cup my face in his hands.

I smiled seductively at Warrick and looped my arms around his neck.

“Hey, handsome.”

He seemed torn, like he was fighting every urge he ever knew. “We need to get out of here.” Instead of draping himself over me like I wanted, he scooped me up and pulled me to my feet. I staggered onto my feet and looked over his shoulder to the riot.

The crowd was pushing forward, aiming for his back. Aiming for me.

I unwrapped myself from Warrick and shoved him away, rushing the crowd. I heard him shouting my name, him and other voices I knew, but I ignored them and threw myself at the crowd.

The first woman to reach me had a butcher knife, oblivious to the two blades I was holding. She shoved the wide knife at my face, but I spun around her back. I kicked the chest of the man behind her to get more space, then turned to her and stabbed the tops of her shoulders. She stiffened and screamed, but I was still moving. I swung around and drove both of my knives into her throat. Blood sprayed and when I pulled my knives back. She dropped to the ground and stopped moving.

It was impossible to keep track of the people I was stabbing. Every time I saw a hand curled around a weapon, I struck first. Shallow cuts traced along my lower back and arms and ribs, but they were paper cuts compared to what I was doing. The occasional fist caught me off balance, but I wasn’t feeling any pain.

I was fighting, I was killing, and I was having the time of my life.

Two more bodies threw themselves into the remaining crush, using their hands and feet to push attackers away from me. I stopped smiling as I saw Sephiel glide in front of me, knocking away punches with ease. Once he had the space, he whirled a powerful roundhouse kick that took down two men at once. Warrick was at my right side, forcing people back with single, powerful hits. Before I could figure out why they weren’t killing anyone, he spun on his heel, grabbed my waist, and started taking me out of the crowd.